Geometry of branes on supergroups Thomas Creutzig DESY Theory Group, DESY Hamburg Notkestrasse 85, D-22607 Hamburg, Germany e-mail: [email protected] September 2008 Abstract In this note we analyze the geometry of maximally symmetric boundary condi- tions in Lie supergroup Wess-Zumino-Novikov-Witten models. We find that gener- ically the worldvolume of a brane is a twisted superconjugacy class, very much like in the Lie group case. Whenever the brane is not completely delocalized in the fermionic directions a new atypical class of branes arises. We give an example of these new branes and show for type I supergroups and trivial gluing conditions that they can be naturally associated with atypical representations of the affine Lie superalgebra. arXiv:0809.0468v1 [hep-th] 2 Sep 2008 1 Introduction Conformal field theories on Lie supergroups and their cosets are an interesting area of current research. They have concrete applications in disordered electron systems and in string theory. In addition sigma models with target space supersymmetry are interesting for their structural and mathematical properties, e.g. they provide examples of non- unitary models with possible nonpositive central charge. Studies of these models were initiated by Rozanski and Saleur [1, 2] who investigated the simplest non-trivial model the WZNW model on the supergroup GL(1|1). These early investigations stimulated much further work on the emerging topic of logarithmic conformal field theory (see e.g. [3, 4] for a review). A few years back, the GL(1|1) WZNW model was revisited in [5] from a geometric rather than algebraic perspective. Effective computational tools were developed and then generalized to all type I Lie supergroups ([6, 7] and especially [8]). The method was further developed to solve the boundary GL(1|1) model with volume filling branes [9]. Branes have been studied in the GL(1|1) model [10] and it was observed that the worldvolumes of the branes are twisted superconjugacy classes. The purpose of this note is two-fold. In the case of Lie groups the insight that the worldvolume of a brane is a twisted conjugacy class [11, 12, 13, 14, 15] turned out to be a powerfull aide in the analysis of the boundary WZNW model. Knowing the geometry of the brane is extremely helpfull in finding the gluing conditions of the fields, performing the minisuperspace analysis and setting up a formalism to solve the full quantum model. Also for problems like studying brane charges knowledge of the geometry is required. Thus for a further exploration of boundary WZNW models on Lie supergroups it is essential to understand its geometry. Representations of Lie superalgebras split into two classes, typical and atypical. While the appearance of singular vectors is generic in the representation theory of Lie algebras, singular vectors due to fermionic generators are quite atypical. Generalizing the proof that the branes’ worldvolume is a twisted superconjugacy class from the known proof for Lie groups is generically possible but it fails at certain atypical points. These atypical points arise when the branes’ worldvolume is not completely delocalized in the fermionic directions. We take this failure as a hint to suspect a different class of branes and indeed find them in the example of GL(1|1). Precisely, associated to these atypical points, we find four possible gluing conditions of which one corresponds to a superconjugacy class, the others do not. The failure is due to the fact that a certain operator is not invertible. This operator is not invertible because of the Grassmannian nature of the relevant Lie algebra. The boundary action typically requires the introduction of a 2-form ω which only exists if this operator is invertible. Thus for these new branes an action can only be found by introducing new auxiliary boundary fields, similar to [9], which we can indeed do for GL(1|1). Then we take a closer look at these branes and atypical representations. We restrict our attention to superconjugacy classes and representations of affine Lie superalgebras of type I. Superconjugacy classes can be labelled by an element of a chosen Cartan subalgebra. Since for basic Lie superalgebras there is a unique invariant 1 non-degenerate bilinear form restricting non-degenerately to its Cartan subalgebras we can identify the Cartan subalgebra element with a weight and then with a representation associated to this weight. Via this identification, we show that a representation of the affine Lie superalgebra is atypical if and only if the associated superconjugacy class is localized in some fermionic directions. The structure of this note is as follows. In section 2 we recall some basic facts on Lie superalgebras and Lie supergroups. In section 3 we show that typically a branes’ worldvolume is a twisted superconjugacy class. In section 4 we compute its action. In section 5 we investigate one example of atypical branes, then we compare co-adjoint orbits with representations of finite-dimensional Lie superalgebras of type I. This is the finite dimensional analogue of superconjugacy classes and representations of affine Lie super- algebras. Then we explain that if and only if a superconjugacy class is not completely delocalized in the fermionic directions the associated representation of the affine Lie su- peralgebra is atypical. In the appendix we list all gluing automorphisms of the relevant Lie superalgebras. 2 Preliminaries We recall some properties of Lie superalgebras. The theory was developed by Victor Kac [17, 18], a collection of results is given in [19]. As a guideline to Lie supergroups we use the book by Berezin [20]. In the following, the Lie superalgebras will be over the real numbers R. Definition 2.1. Let g be a Z2 graded algebra g = g0¯ ⊕ g1¯ with product [ , ] : g × g → g that respects the grading. The parity of an homogeneous element is denoted by 0 X in g¯ |X| = 0 . (2.1) n 1 X in g1¯ Then g is a Lie superalgebra if it satisfies antisupersymmetry and graded Jacobi iden- tity, i.e. 0 = [X,Y ]+(−1)|X||Y |[Y,X] and (2.2) 0 = (−1)|X||Z|[X, [Y,Z]]+(−1)|Y ||X|[Y, [Z,X]]+(−1)|Z||Y |[Z, [X,Y ]] , for all X,Y and Z in g. Further a bilinear form B : g × g → R is called a consistent supersymmetric invariant bilinear form if B(X,Y ) = 0 ∀ X ∈ g0¯ ∧ ∀ Y ∈ g1¯ B(X,Y ) − (−1)|X||Y |B(Y,X) = 0 ∀ X,Y ∈ g and (2.3) B([X,Y ],Z) − B(X, [Y,Z]) = 0 ∀ X,Y,Z ∈ g . 2 A simple Lie superalgebra whose even part is a reductive Lie algebra and which pos- sesses a nonzero supersymmetric invariant bilinear form, is called a basic Lie superalgebra. They are completely classified [17, 18]. There are the infinite series of unitary superal- gebras sl(m|n) for m =6 n, psl(n|n) and the orthosymplectic series osp(m|2n) as well as some exceptional ones. In addition we will also consider Lie superalgebras of type gl(m|n). We state their fundamental matrix realizations in appendix A.1. A non degenerate in- variant supersymmetric bilinear form is then given by the supertrace str in this matrix representation which we will use in the following sections. A Lie supergroup can be obtained from a Lie superalgebra as follows. Let {ta} be b a basis of g0¯ and {s } a basis of g1¯, then the Grassmann envelope Λ(g) of g consists of formal linear combinations a b X = xat + θbs (2.4) where the xa are Grassmann even, the θb Grassmann odd and summation over the indices is implied. Note, that Λ(g) is a Lie algebra. Then following Berezin [20] a supergroup G is the group generated by elements g of the form g = exp X with X in the Grassmann envelope of g, i.e. the Lie supergroup G of the Lie superalgebra g is the Lie group of the Lie algebra Λ(g). Further we denote the Lie subgroup of the subalgebra g0¯ by G0. The Lie group G acts on its Lie algebra Λ(g) by conjugation Ad(a): Λ(g) → Λ(g) , X 7→ aXa−1 (2.5) for a in G and X in Λ(g). Since the invariant bilinear form is the supertrace of a repre- sentation it is invariant under the adjoint action, i.e. str(Ad(a)X, Ad(a)Y ) = str(X,Y ) (2.6) for any X,Y in Λ(g) and a in G. Consider a Lie supergroup G with a supersymmetric invariant nonzero bilinear form. We identify the Grassmann envelope of the underlying Lie superalgebra with the tangent space at the identity, Λ(g)= TeG. On the tangent space TgG at g in G we have left and right identification, Lg : Λ(g) −→ TgG, LgX = gX and (2.7) Rg : Λ(g) −→ TgG, RgX = Xg . The left identification induces a left invariant metric, i.e. (gX,gY ) := str(X,Y ). This metric is also right invariant, since it is invariant under the adjoint action Ad(g−1). Now we turn to the description of branes. Let Σ be an orientable Riemann surface with boundary ∂Σ. Further let xa : Σ → Λ0(R) and θb : Σ → Λ1(R) be infinitely differentiable functions into the even respectively odd part of the Grassmann algebra over R. By infinitely differentiable we mean a function of the form [20] f = f(x) = fi1,...,ik (x)θi1 ...θik , (2.8) Xk≥0 i1X,...,ik 3 R where x ∈ Σ, the fi1,...,ik (x) are -valued infinitely differentiable functions on Σ and the θi generate the Grassmann algebra Λ(R).